With our common interest in space flight, I thought you might like to see this. Right now, we have a spacecraft called "Juno" in space in the early part of its flight to Jupiter. Right now it is 300 million miles from Earth (500 million kilometers for you metric types,lol) and its starting to head back towards us. It will pass by Earth in 2013, using a gravity assist to launch it on its long journey to Jupiter, which it will get there sometime in 2016.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48852986...science-space/
When it was 6 million miles out, it turned its camera towards the Earth and made a great snapshot not only of earth, but the moon also. The article didn't have that picture in it, so I went looking for it and found it here on this web page. What I thought was great about it, besides the picture is the description of oue little Blue Planet that was written by Dr. Carl Sagan. Puts a lot of things in perspective I think.
http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience...g-cosmic-dark/
Now, a little trivia question. Looking at a picture of Jupiter, how many planets the size of Earth, would fit inside the reddish orange spot? (Which is a giant never ending storm up there I believe) The answer will give you some kind of idea as to how big Jupiter really is!!